The Meat Lovers' Special

Noel Vera

Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" opens with a harsh scraping
sound (Metal brush dragged over car hood? Iron filings ground into
steel plate?), revealed to be a man shaving his stubble with a huge
knife. This is "Priest" Vallon (Liam Neeson), preparing himself for
battle with his young son looking on. The camera follows Vallon and
child through labyrinthine passages (an old brewery) as he walks past
his army--a band of rough customers (soldiers, if you like)
sharpening fork tines, tucking away glass shards, slipping on brass
knuckles, chewing on consecrated bread. They deem themselves ready,
and a man kicks the front door open into eerie winter silence.

Outside, they meet William "Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis)--head
wrapped in leather and sporting a mustache the size and shape of a
kitchen apron--and his gang. Priest and Bill the Butcher
invoke "ancient rituals" and the battle is joined: club, sword, meat
cleaver, even teeth filed into fangs (set inside the mouth of a woman
who swoops, vampirelike, on her prey) seek their respective ounce of
bone or flesh.

It's a bravura sequence that puts to shame any number of video
footage you've seen of war conducted from a distance (through cross-
hairs, at the push of the button). This is war conducted up close
and personal: face-to-face--nose-to-nose, even--with combatants often
locked in a fierce embrace before expiring in agony. The battle is
more intense than anything in recent cinema, inspired perhaps by
Orson Welles' Battle of Shrewsbury in "Chimes of Midnight" (the
bodies hurled to the ground, the metallic music). Scorsese doesn't
quite achieve Welles' level, but he does have the filmmaking and
editing chops to at least make the comparison unembarrassing.

The film itself compares in scale and sweep to any number of American
History epics, from Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part 2;"
to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America." The plot, however,
is basically "Hamlet:" Bill kills Priest, and Priest's son is exiled
for sixteen years; he comes back to New York a young man named
Amsterdam (Leonardo Dicaprio), seeking vengeance. Bill, not
recognizing Amsterdam, takes him in as protégé (have I
mentioned "Oedipus Rex" yet?); along the way Amsterdam develops an
increasingly uncasual acquaintance with Bill's other protégé, Jenny
(Cameron Diaz), a pickpocket-cum-prostitute. Meanwhile, the vast
horde of poor immigrant New Yorkers seethe at the military draft--
especially at the fact that it can be avoided for $300, an amount the
rich can easily afford, but they cannot.

If mention of the draft feels thrown in, that's what it felt like in
the film too; the ominously turbulent societal background seems to
belong to another, perhaps more interesting movie. There are ideas
percolating here--the transformation of violence from old (tribal
warfare) to modern (military massacres); the emerging power of the
immigrant hordes (and perhaps America was fertile ground for the rise
of that kind of power); the observation that though times change
corruption and fratricidal hatred do not. These are only curtly
acknowledged, then set aside, however, rather than integrated into
the narrative. The main plot (boy seeks revenge for father's death)
is rather flat; it lacks the dreamy pull of Leone's "Once Upon a
Time," the epic near-perfection of Coppola's "Godfather 2." "Gangs,"
in terms of pizza making, is strictly thin-crust.

But ah, the toppings! The dreamy ricotta of a candlelit dance; the
pounded beef of a brutal prizefight; the exotic wonton of a Chinese
opera in a whorehouse. Scorsese on a $100 million budget can hardly
be accused of stinginess; with the help of Dante Ferreti's masterful
designs and Michael Ballhaus' richly textured cinematography, he
gives "Gangs" The Works--everything on top, double helpings.

Sitting at the center of this concoction is Daniel Day-Lewis' Bill
the Butcher. He's not just a villain, not just the heart of this
vast darkness; he's the film's most fully realized character, an anti-
hero who wears the gigantic production easily on his outsized
shoulders.

Bill can be barbaric; he's as likely to pin your hand to the table
with a knife as reprimand you. He can be crude--using his forehead
to batter an opponent's face--same time he's enormously skilled as a
butcher (he practices slicing meat from fresh carcasses, pointing out
the kill points as he does so). He's contemptuous of the grimy Irish
immigrants who step ashore from incoming ships, yet he's not above
exploiting them to line his pockets. He believes in giving one's
life for one's country as his father did, and he can be generous-
hearted, as Jenny will testify (he took her in as a child, just like
he took in Amsterdam). He has an intricately knotted sense of honor--
years before, Priest had beaten Bill to a pulp, then spared him to
live in shame; Bill grew strong enough to defeat Priest, yet still
reveres the man as one of the few he's killed worth remembering. He
is also a monstrous sadist.

The character as written seems colorful and disparate, almost
unbelievably so; yet Day-Lewis makes us accept the humanity of his
character, same time he makes us cringe in terror of him (the US
Armed Forces could learn from his "shock and awe" tactics). It helps
that Day-Lewis is physically eloquent, that he uses knives with
convincing grace and ease, and that the speed with which he sharpens
blades is more than a little frightening. His accent you wonder
about...but then even Olivier had trouble with American accents; it's
almost the kind of minor foible that puts a seal of approval on the
entire package.

Daniel Day-Lewis' Bill the Butcher, in short, is the meatball
dominating all else: intensely flavored (almost rancid), yet somehow
believable, and huge. Too huge--as Scorsese conceives him and Day-
Lewis plays him, he overwhelms not just the Brobdingnagian sets
(built in the legendary Cinecitta studios, in Rome) but everyone else
in the picture.

There are other flaws. The lack of vegetables--sorry, women (Jenny
is mostly plot function); Leonardo Decaprio's Amsterdam (he plays
whitebread to Day-Lewis' prosciutto); the climax, mixing the Draft
Riots with Amsterdam and Bill's final confrontation (sort of like
setting "High Noon" in the middle of the bombing of
Dresden). "Gangs" is hardly a perfect film, and its sense of history
is questionable, but as spectacle and showcase of sheer filmmaking
and (in one especially vivid case) acting talent it can hardly be
ignored. In pizza terms, you might say it's hardly a balanced diet,
but an occasional order can't hurt--and it gives a protein high like
no other.

(Originally printed in Businessworld 3.28.03)

(Comments? Please email noelbotevera@...)